The present invention relates to a refrigerated merchandiser including a plurality of air curtains, and more particularly, to a merchandiser including a modular shelf air discharge, a primary air curtain, and a secondary air curtain.
In conventional practice, supermarkets and convenience stores are equipped with refrigerated merchandisers that have open display portions for presenting fresh food or beverages in a product display area to customers while maintaining the fresh food and beverages (i.e., food product) in a refrigerated environment. Typically, refrigerated merchandisers include a curtain of cool, refrigerated air that passes downward across the open face portion of the merchandiser to form a flowing boundary of air between the product display area and the rest of the store. The air curtain is generated by an airflow through a passageway of the refrigerated merchandiser that is cooled by one or more evaporators disposed in the passageway, and that is discharged from an outlet in a canopy of the merchandiser. The air curtain assists in keeping refrigerated air within the product display area to cool the food product and protects the product display area from ambient air in the surrounding store. Warmer ambient conditions surrounding the refrigerated merchandiser increase cooling requirements of the merchandiser and can undesirably increase the temperature of the food product in the product display area.
Most refrigerated display merchandisers use a single, long-throw air curtain to minimize ambient air infiltration into the product display area. Some refrigerated merchandisers use multiple air curtains or doors to limit entrainment of ambient air that can occur in a single air curtain refrigerated merchandiser, and to maintain the product display area at desired temperatures. Refrigerated merchandisers with two or more adjacent air curtains include an outer air curtain that has a slightly higher temperature than the inner air curtain, so as to protect the colder, inner air curtain from the impact of ambient air surrounding the merchandiser. These multiple air curtain refrigerated merchandisers are designed to limit problems of entrainment of ambient air into the colder, inner air curtain. However, such designs are still susceptible to the intrusion of ambient air into the refrigerated air curtain.